Compiled by Dick
Bennett for a Culture of Peace.

(#1 May 21, 2011; #2
May 19, 2012; #3 May 18, 2013).

What’s at stake.

I devote many
newsletters to US militarism and imperialism.
The catastrophe of the enormous US military reminds us of the ten years of the Nazi Wehrmacht (the unified armed
forces of Nazi
Germany from 1935 to 1945--the Heer/army,
the Kriegsmarine/navy, and the Luftwaffe/air force); four years of preparation,
six years of shock and awe conquering Europe, N. Africa, and much of the USSR. The US invasion of Afghanistan
has lasted 16 years, the invasion and occupation of Iraq fifteen—veritably unceasing
wars, now covering the planet in a so-called War Against (of) Terrorism to
justify six global military Commands, 800 military bases abroad, 10 carrier
battle groups, large-scale killing and torturing, and an annual budget now near
a trillion dollars not spent on US and global urgent human needs.

“Since 9-11,” Tom Engelhardt
writes, a “theocratic warrior class” has developed in the US, “a religion of
perpetual conflict whose doctrines tend to grow ever more extreme. . . . whose
purpose is to carry out a Washington-based version of global jihad, a perpetual
war in the name of the true faith.” (Shadow Government, 7).

The German people have been
criticized for keeping silent. We must
speak out, lest we deserve the same criticism.

( However, climate catastrophe
precedes all this in priority, let’s not forget, since the potential damage to
the planet from warming exceeds that of
wars even when endless, becauseUS Empire is only one
though probably the major single source of CO2 and warming. .See the many newsletters and OMNI
activities committed to resistance to warming. )

We are not defenseless, unless
we choose not be a part of the peace, justice, and ecology movement.

Contents: Peace Forces Day Newsletter #4

President Trump’s
Proclamation and “Rebuilding” the Armed Services

Rebuild? Jeffrey Sachs, A $900 Billion Budget

Restore? Mittelstadt, Military Welfare Unprecedented

De-Celebrating
Armed Forces: OMNI Countering National and International Days for Violence and
War

OMNI’s Peace
Force: Selected Newsletters

Distinguishing 3 of the Many Days Celebrating
Armed Violence

Memorial Day is the day we memorialize
and celebrate those who died in military service for the United States.

Veterans Day we celebrate those who previously served in the
United States military.

Armed Forces Day (3rd
Saturdays of May) we celebrate those currently serving
in the United States military.

Vice President Pence
marked Armed Forces Day Saturday by
touting the Trump administration's commitment to "rebuild" the U.S.
military.

"I'm just here on
President Trump's behalf, while he's on the other side of the world, simply to
say thank you," Pence said to a crowd at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
in Dayton, Ohio.

"I want to assure you, President Donald Trump is
fighting tirelessly every day, and we will rebuild our military, restore the
arsenal of democracy and we will, once again as a nation, give our soldiers,
sailors, airmen, marines and coast guard the resources and training you deserve
to accomplish your mission and come home safe."

REBUILDING? RESTORE?

JEFFREY SACHS: “…what we really spend on the military. We have another
$60 billion on addition to the $600 billion of the Pentagon. That is the
intelligence agencies. We have Homeland Security. We have military expenses
hidden in the Department of Energy. Of course, we have the incredible costs,
the human damage and health in the Veterans Administration. If you add it all
up, it’s probably closer to $900 billion
a year. It completely swamps everything else that we’re doing right now.
And now [Trump is] going to add on top of that [$54 billion more for the wars]—and
propose tax cuts for rich people and for corporations. From Amy Goodman, Democracy Now

Since the end of the draft, the
U.S. Army has prided itself on its patriotic volunteers who heed the call to
“Be All That You Can Be.” But beneath the recruitment slogans, the army promised
volunteers something more tangible: a social safety net including medical and
dental care, education, child care, financial counseling, housing assistance,
legal services, and other privileges that had long been reserved for career
soldiers. The Rise of the Military Welfare State examines how
the U.S. Army’s extension of benefits to enlisted men and women created a military welfare system of unprecedented
size and scope.

And the Pentagon
Propaganda Godzilla never stops: google Armed Forces Day and continue clicking
on “Next”.

But
there is a peace movement in the US, and Arkansas has OMNI and in Little Rock
ACPJ.

This
newsletter continues OMNI’s NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL DAYS PROJECT.
Half of the Project affirms nonviolent DAYs, such as Human Rights Day,
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The other
half offers alternatives to violent, imperial, or generally misdirected days,
as with the following:

Feb. 14:
Standing on the Side of Love Day (formerly commercialized Valentine’s
Day)

May,
2nd Sunday: Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day for Peace (Mother’s Day
another Day drowned in advertising)

3rd Sat. in
May: Peace Forces Day (Armed Forces Day)

May,
last Monday: Day of Mourning for Victims
of Wars (Memorial Day)

June
14: Liberty and Justice for All Day (Flag Day)

June,
3rd Sunday: Father’s Day for
Peace (Father’s Day)

September
11 (9-11): Peaceful Tomorrows Day
(Patriot Day)

Oct., 2nd Monday: Indigenous People of the
Americas Day (Columbus Day)

Nov.
11: World Unity Day (Veterans Day) (Or
Armistice Day in 1918 when WWI ended).

November:
Fourth Thursday: National Day of
Gratitude and Atonement (Thanksgiving)

--Angus, Ian.
Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil
Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System.
Monthly Review, 2016. Outstanding, because it not only surveys
the symptoms and urgency of climate change but also the causes in our economic and energy systems. A reader of this book will possess a power
deep and wide for resistance. --Dick

t--Angus, Ian. Climate
and Capitalism. A case for
eco-socialism (See rev. below.) See: Williams.(Dick: Angus alas has a new
book denying the crucial importance of population growth!) *--Archer, David. The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the
Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate. Princeton UP, 2009.
Dick: Like the other books, this
one describes what is likely to happen, but also the changes expected over many
centuries. Hansen praised the book
highly. Art: This is somewhat science oriented, would be
enjoyed by a scientist, engineer, etc.
James Hansen, director of the
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies:
“This is the best book about carbon dioxide and climate change that I
have read.” Steve Boss: “Not only are massive climate changes
coming if we humans continue on our current path, but many of these changes
will last for millennia….This is the book for anyone who wishes to really
understand what cutting-edge science tells us about the effects we are having,
and will have, on our future climate.”
Richard Alley.

--Aystk, Sharon. Depletion
and Abundance: Life on the New Homefront.

--Beavan, Colin.No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save
the Planet and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in
the Process. Farrar, Straus, and
Giroux, 2009. Fayetteville chose this book for its One Book
Program 2011. It’s fascinating watching
the author trying to tell youth the truth yet be hopeful.

--Bertel, Rosalie. Planet
Earth: The Latest Weapon of War. Black
Rose Books, 2001. The increasingly
destructive effects of weaponry and wars.
The quest for military dominance has destabilized the balance of the
earth’s ecosystem. We need a return to
the UN for international cooperation
against the causes and effects of climate change. (Ref. Dick’s UN and Climate doc). See on climate and military: Branagan, Dyer, Parenti, Paskal, Sanders,

--Blatt, Harvey. America’s Environmental Report Card: Are We Making the Grade? 2nd ed. MIT P, 2011.
An indictment of inaction on the part of citizens and policy-makers and
of the consumption-based economic drivers of environmental degradation.

--Bloomberg, Michael and Carl Pope.Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and
Citizens Can Save the Planet.St Martin’s, 2017. “…it’s time for a new type of conversation
about climate change that reverses all the usual ways of looking at the
issue. Instead of debating long-term
consequences, let’s talk about immediate threats. Instead of arguing about making sacrifices,
let’s talk about how we can make money.
Instead of pitting the environment versus the economy, let’s consider
market principles and economic growth” (3).

--Bovard, James.
Attention Deficit Democracy. Palgrave, 2005. Why the public ignores political and
corporate frauds and swallows pervasive lies, why they are indifferent to facts
and increasingly incapable of judging when their rights and liberties are being
destroyed. Author also of Lost Rights.
See Oreskes & Conway, Merchants
of Doubt and other books on contrarians and deniers. .

--Marty Branagan. Global Warming, Militarism and
Nonviolence: The Art of Active Resistance. Palgrave, 2013.272 pages. $95 on demand. See Parenti, Paskal.--* (10-16-11)Brown, Lester. World
on the Edge: How to Prevent
Environmental and Economic Collapse. Norton,
2011. Outstanding study. Brown’s long-developed “Plan B” explains how sustainable progress can be created only by
“massive mobilization—at wartime speed” and by “truth through full-cost
pricing.” The comprehensiveness of Plan
B --stabilize climate and population, eradicate poverty, and restore natural
systems—is a standard for all the other solutions. This book was the subject of the Oct. 2011
Forum/CC Book Club sponsored by FPL and OMNI.

--Brown Jr., Tom. Tom
Brown’s Field Guide to Nature Observation and Tracking. An excellent teaching manual
that helps the reader reconnect deeply with nature. Tom Brown was trained by a
Native American mentor and all of his books are excellent for learning about
survival skills in wilderness and in the city.

--Butler,Tom. Energy: Overdevelopment and
the Delusion of Endless Growth. 2012.

--Casten,Thomas
R.Turning
Off the Heat: Why America Must Double Energy Efficiency to Save Money and
Reduce Global Warming. Prometheus, 1998. Notable
for having been published so early, and in fact he had started his warnings
about C02 in 1975, and in 1976 began teaching how to make a profit from C02
emissions (see article in Skeptical
Inquirer Jan.-Feb. 2013).

--Catton,William.Overshoot:
The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change. 1982. There must be limits to our tremendous
appetite for energy, natural resources, and consumer goods. And for years some biologists have warned us
of the direct correlation between scarcity and population growth. These scientists see an appalling future
riding the tidal wave of a worldwide growth of population and technology. Other books onpopulation:

--Characterizing Risk in Climate
Change Assessments: Proceedings of a Workshop.The U.S. Global Change Research Program
(USGCRP) was established in 1990 to “assist the Nation and the world to
understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes
of global change

--Collier, Paul. The
Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest
Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. 2011.
“Collier examines the economics, politics, and ethics of natural
resource use, in particular as these affect poor nations. The so-called "resource curse" is analyzed,
to understand the oft-repeated phenomenon of extractive industries leaving
resource-rich yet poor countries, resource-poor and impoverished.” (Gary K)
One of the four goals of Lester Brown’s Plan B is “eradicating
poverty.” (Dick. See Catton on population.)

--*Collier, Paul.The
Plundered Planet: Why We Must—And How We Can—Manage Nature for Global
Prosperity. 2010. " I
particularly enjoyed his description of environmental romanticism vs.
plundering profit motive, and how we must move to the center of those two poles
by basing our use of natural resources and ecosystem services on a truly
ethical and sustainable framework. His high-flying nations-at-a-glance
perspective is valuable, as are his insights into the workings, and failings,
of governments and societies.".
Those with a keen interest in the plight of the poor nations and
intergenerational justice may enjoy this book, which is a follow-up to
Collier's very popular and well-regarded book, "The Bottom Billion."

--Coyle, Diane.
The Economics of Enough: How to Run the Economy as if the future
matters (Princeton). See her laudatory rev. in The Independent of Lynas’s The God Species. Date?--Coyne, Kelly and Erik Knutzen. The
Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City.

--Dauvergne, Peter. The
Shadows of Consumption: Consequences for the Global Environment. MIT P, 2009. The shadows of consumption that modern life
casts, from the consumption of beef to the use of cars and fridges. (Dick:
And population growth? See Brown,
Catton.)

-- The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.
Why we do what we do in life and business. See books on reason.

*--Dianne Dumanoski.The End of the Long Summer---Why We Must
Remake Our Civilization to Survive on a Volatile Earth. 2009.(Dec. 2, 2012, Neath). This seems to be an intro. to cc, covering
subjects already well discussed in previous books (reduce, reuse, recycle; resilience),
but though it may be preaching to the OMNI350 choir, it gives us an opportunity
to reach out to the audience still beginning (majority?). Art gave it high praise. See publisher’s review below.

--Dyer, Gwynne. Climate
Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats. 2010.
Warming will increase militarism and wars. Without drastic reduction in C02 the planet
will heat 4 degrees by 2060, so Dyer
advocates geoengineering—e.g. Solar Radiation Management—to give us time. (See: Bertel, Parenti, Paskal.)

--Brian Fagan. The Great Warming. Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilization
(2008).

*--Firor, John and Judith Jacobsen. The
Crowded Greenhouse: Population,
Climate Change, and Creating a Sustainable World. Yale UP, 2002. Important for including population in the
mix of warming causes. But Catholic
Church unmentioned in Index. See Catton,

--Tim
Flannery. The Weather Makers. 2007. Dick: This is the first book I read giving
facts of climate change and consequences; for example, the inevitable
submersion of many Pacific islands and ensuing refugees.

-- Richard Florida. The
Great Reset. How new ways of
living and working drive post-crash prosperity.

--Thomas L. Friedman.Hot,
Flat, and Crowded: why we need a green revolution, and how it can renew America.Art: This book is more about energy and "being
green" than about global warming.
It sends out a positive message that most people can identify with.

--Gelbspan, Ross. The Heat Is On. 1997. Boiling
Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and
Coal, Journalists, and Activists Are Fueling the Climate Crisis—and What We Can
Do to Avert Disaster. Basic Books,
2004. Rev. NYT
Book Review (August 15, 2004).
Note the date—Gelbspan’s book the earliest true and strong book-length
warning of the climate cover-up that I know of.
See Grant.

--Michael B. Gerrard (Editor). Global Climate Change and U.S. Law. First Edition. See Freeman and Gerrard, 2nd
ed. (See Climate Law doc, Prof.
Gosman; Mary C. Wood’s Nature’s Trust.--Gipe,
Paul. His
books form the basic library for the progress of wind energy (Wasserman). His newest book, Wind Energy for
the Rest of Us: A Comprehensive Gide to Wind Power and How to Use It.,--Glendinning, Chellis. When Technology Wounds. Off the Map.
My Name is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization. --Goodell, Jeff. How to
Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth’s Climate.
--Gore, Al. An
Inconvenient Truth. Gore’s book and
film kick-started the warming awareness movement. OMNI (Kelly and Donna leaders) showed the
film at the Fiesta Cinema and handed out efficient light bulbs.
--Gore, Al. Our
Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.
Melcher, Rodale, 2009.
Dick: Why is this masterful, accurate,
well-written and illustrated, compendious book on the realities of warming and
alternatives so neglected? It makes An Inconvenient Truth seem like an
intro. for youth.
____Assault on Reason. See Allison, Lynch.-----Graetz, Michael. The
End of Energy: The Unmaking of America’s
Environment, Security, and Independence. MIT P, 2011. Forty years of energy incompetence:
villains, failures of leadership, and missed opportunities. See Heinberg.

*--Grain.3/05/17 - The Great Climate Robbery by GRAIN - https://www.grain.org/article/entries/5354-the-great-climate-robbery -
facilitated by Jeanne Neath
--Grant, John. Denying
Science: Conspiracy Theories, Media Distortions, and the War Against
Reality. Prometheus, 2011. Noted in Skeptical Inquirer (Sept.-Oct. 2011): Grant explains why denialism is rampant in
the US: climate
change (last 2 chapters), AIDS, vaccines, evolution, and more. This biblio. includes several books on this
subject: Allison, Gelbspan, Hansen, Heinberg, Hoggan, Michaels.
--Marc Gunther.Suck It
Up. 2012. From Orlo Stitt: “It is easy reading and only a few hours to
read it all. It will raise lots of
interesting questions about what the situation is now, what should be done, and
a “now, money doesn’t matter,” vision into what can or could be done to curb
the rising concentrations of atmospheric
CO2. The most interesting fact
defined in the book for me is that very wealthy and prominent people, like Bill
Gates, the Bronfman heirs and others, are investing heavily in startup
companies that are mainly doing research on geo-engineering and/or massive
mechanical/chemical systems/processes to remove, use, or dispose of giga-tons
of CO2. Also, the entrepreneurs are
highly educated, principally from MIT, Harvard, Yale, McGill, Stanford or
elsewhere and are dedicated to finding solutions to a global problem that many
people do not accept, perceive, or recognize as threatening. It will be a fun
book to review with others. I know it is
available on a Kindle Reader but do not know if available in hard copy or for
iPads or iPhones? ” These hopes of 2012
were not realized. See more below.

--*Hansen, James. Storms
of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our
Last Chance to Save Humanity. Bloomsbury, 2009.
Art Hobson: The brave early
truthteller, respected by all climate scientists. Dick: The science is there, and he also tells
a fascinating political story of Bush Admin. successful denial and censorship
(combined with the Koch network money and organization).

--Hartmann, Thom. Last
Hours of Ancient Sunlight. Leonardo
da Caprio based his film on this book.
Interv. FSTV 9-24-09.

-- Hawken,
Paul. Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan…. Penguin, 2017. 100 different ways to drawdown CO2
emissions used successfully around the world.

--Hay, William W. Experimenting
on a Small Planet: A Scholarly Entertainment.
Springer, 2013. 983pp. Copy loaned to me by Malcolm Cleveland,
purchased via Amazon. I asked him to
have his Dept. order it; he said ok. 2nd
ed. to appear March 2016.

___. Blackout:
Coal, Climate, and the Last Energy Crisis. New Society, 2009. “Exposing the dirty secrets and hidden costs
of coal…analysis of the future of coal based on scarcity, cost, and climate
impacts.” (Pub. “Coal, the habit we must kick, and
fast.” (McKibben).

___ The
Party’s Over

____The Oil Depletion Protocol.

_______Peak Everything.

*_____. The End of Growth: Adapting to
Our New Economic Reality. New Society, 2011. This scholarly, compendious book is about energy
and economics (Index has only a few references to climate change) and the
“fifth great turning in human history….from fossil fueled, debt- and
growth-based industrial civilization toward [he hopes ] a sustainable,
renewable, steady-state society.” We need a fully comprehensive book that
combines the end of capitalism and of nature as we knew them! Brown is close. See Graetz.
Two older books: The No-Growth Society, ed. Mancur Olson
and Hans Landsberg (Norton 1973); Better
Not Bigger by Eben Fodor (New Society, 1999).

--Heinberg, Richard. Snake Oil: How Fracking’s False
Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future. 2013.--*Hertsgaard, Mark. Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth. Houghton Mifflin, 2011. (Steve Boss). Somber warnings as in all of these
books—e.g., p. 69 2 degrees above preindustrial levels will be catastrophic;
beyond a certain point adaptation impossible.--Hester, Randolph. Design for Ecological Democracy. MIT P, 2009. Success stories for all who would build more
beautiful, sustainable, and just communities.--Hocking, Colin,
et al. Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect. Rev.
LHS GEMS, 1990. Great
Explorations in Math and Science (GEMS), Lawrence Hall of Science, U.
California at Berkeley. A textbook for grades
7 to 10. The earliest textbooks for
youths on climate change of which I am aware.
The authors acknowledge Richard Golden for taking “the initiative to
develop this series of educational activities about global warming and the
greenhouse effect in 1987. Why it took
more than two decades for this knowledge to reach general public education is
no mystery. By alphabetical accident the
following book by Hoggan and Littlemore exposes the corporate, especially
fossil fuels industry, campaign of confusion, denial, and delay.--James Hoggan with Richard Littlemore. Climate
Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming. Greystone Books, 2009. “This is a story of betrayal, a story of
selfishness, greed, and irresponsibility on an epic scale.” (See Michaels below for list of related
books).

Hopkins, Rob. The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency
to Local Resilience (or other books about the TransitionTown
movement).

-- John
Houghton. Global Warming: The Complete Briefing. 2009.
“John Houghton's market-leading textbook is now in full color and includes the
latest IPCC findings, making it the definitive guide to climate change. Written
for students across a wide range of disciplines, its simple, logical flow of
ideas gives an invaluable grounding in the science and impacts of climate
change and highlights the need for action on global warming. Is there evidence
for climate changing due to human activities? How do we account for recent
extremes of weather and climate? Can global electricity provision and transport
ever be carbon free? Written by a leading figure at the forefront of action to
confront humanity's most serious environmental problem. “From Amazon.
--Jensen,Derrick. Endgame. Vol. 1, “The Problem of
Civilization.” (on warming?)--Kellogg, Scottand Stacy Pettigrew. Toolbox
for Sustainable City Living. --Knechtel, John, ed.Air. MIT P, 2010.
Writers, artists, and scholars consider the fragility of air, the ultimate
commons.

--Fred
Krupp & Miriam Horn, Earth: the Sequel: The race to reinvent energy and stop global
warming. Norton, 2008. Art: This book looks more at energy than it does
at global warming, has lots of suggestions for alternative energy and energy
conservation. Dick: Compare optimistic 2008 ed. to Little’s Power Trip.
The 2009 “Afterword” in
paperback ed. acknowledges a “darker” momentum in US politics. He based much of his hopes on Congress
capping carbon, which it failed to do.Krupp is
Pres of Environmental Defense Fund.

--Kunstler, James
H.The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of
Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First
Century. Grove, 2005. Pessimistic analysis. Severely criticizes political and business
elites for failure in knowledge, vision, and courage, and the public for living
in childish hopes and wishes. What will
people do when cheap oil ends and warming continues? (Dick)

--Lester, Richard
and David Hart. Unlocking Energy Innovation: How America Can Build a Low-Cost, Low-
Carbon Energy System. MIT,
2011. Experts outline a plan to overhaul
the US
energy system for accelerated, large-scale, reliable technologies.

--Little,
Amanda. Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells—Our Ride to the Renewable
Future. HarperCollins, 2009. At one point Little condemns greenwashing
and eschews half-measures ( 374-5), but mainly she asserts confidence in US
ingenuity, creativity, and resilience to solve problems. First half of book traces how US became
dependent upon fossil fuels—“clues to understand our future”’; second half on how
we can “change our future course.”

--Climate Change and Food Security. Adapting
agriculture to a warming world (2010), eds. David Lobell and Marshall Burke.

-- Michael Löwy. Ecosocialism: A Radical Alternative to
Capitalist Catastrophe (Haymarket, 2015).
I prepared a study guide for the Forum members, and Jeanne, Lolly,
Gladys, liked it; Jeanne rec. it for discussion.
*--Lovelock, James. The Vanishing
Face of Gaia: A Final Warning. Basic
Books, 2009. Dick: Another stringent, dire warning; in 2009 I
thought it was the darkest. Lovelock argues that climatic change is
likely to lead to a hotter Earth able to sustain only a small fraction of the
world's current population. From book
jacket: “The global temperature is
rising, the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps are melting….There is nothing humans
can do to reverse the process; the planet is simply too overpopulated to halt
its own destruction by greenhouse gases….In order to survive, mankind must
start preparing now for life on a radically changed planet.” Perhaps Lovelock’s is the first book to make adaptation the primary goal.--Lumborg. Cool
It. 2007. Former denier now affirms scientific
consensus, but does not think it will have the catastrophic effects post 2007-
IPCC reports describe.

For general readers, it will wake people up. It tells us what will happen with 1 degree of
warming, then with 2 degrees, ...and finally with 6 degrees. By about 3 degrees, things are getting really
bad.

*-- Mark Lynas. The
God Species---Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans. This book is strongly
recommended by Gary Kahanak: Lynas
identifies the planetary boundaries which
should not be exceeded if the biosphere is to continue to function reliably as
in the past. Nine planetary boundaries were settled on, and quantifiable limits
were set for seven of these. See
separate doc on this book. Gary’s fuller comments
below. (A directly clearer title would
be: The Growth Species, for the book
is pro-growth (D)).

--Lynch, Michael. In Praise of Reason. MIT P, 2012. Explains “the Enlightenment’s best
idea.” See Gore’s Assault on Reason and the several books on attacks on science
listed in this biblio..

-- David MacKay. Sustainable
Energy—Without the Hot Air. Gary: “This is an excellent treatment of energy
policy for policymakers (which means it is comprehensible for beginners as well
as experts). MacKay is a physics
professor at Cambridge
who tired of the misinformation and misconceptions driving energy policy, so he
wrote this book to set the science straight.
The primary goal of this book is to illustrate the physical limits of
each form of power, renewable or otherwise, and relate that to the world’s
demand for energy. The book is available
in its entirety online free at www.withouthotair.com . I bought the book---it’s a masterwork, a
great reference, and actually very accessible and fun to read. Some endorsements from the cover: "This remarkable book sets out, with
enormous clarity and objectivity, the various alternative low-carbon pathways that are open to us.";
"At last a book that comprehensively reveals the true facts about
sustainable energy in a form that is both highly readable and
entertaining."; “The book is a tour de force...As a work of popular
science it is exemplary...For anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the real
problems involved, it is the place to start.";;"...a really valuable
contribution...uses a potent mixture of arithmetic and common sense to dispel
some myths and slay some sacred cows."”

--Magdoff, Fred
and John B. Foster. What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism. Monthly Review P, 2011. For environmentalists who imagine we can
solve the ecological crisis without confronting capitalism, and for all who
still fail to recognize the crisis as the direst expression of the capitalist
threat. See Foster and other books
on capitalism: Sandel on market-system;

--Arjun
Makhijani,Carbon-Free and
Nuclear-Free: A
Roadmap for U.S.
Energy Policy. 2009. “We can eliminate carbon emissions from the US
energy system by 2050 without relying on nuclear
power, and we have a plan to do it! www.carbonfreenuclearfree.org/

*-- Michael Mann. The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines".Columbia
UP, 2012. Art: “…a leading climate scientist. I read the dust cover and a few excerpts, and
am quite familiar with the history and the hoked up (by big oil) controversy
surrounding the famous "hockey stick graph" showing temperature
versus time during the past 2000 years.
Big oil knows that if they can't suppress the scientific work about
global warming, they're done for. I
first started hearing this industry-inspired hokum a decade or so ago, from
Bill Orton here in town. The book looks
like a quite readable account of the climate wars, with plenty of insights into
the influence of big oil and also plenty of social and scientific insights into
global warming. It seems to be well
written (I've read only a few excerpts so far) and directed at the general
non-scientific public. I recommend it
for one of our books at some point.” (See
Michaels, Oreskes and Conway, et al.).

--Manno
(see Princen).

---Marshall,
Don’t Even Think About It. Discussed by Book Forum Spring 2016. Not in Mullins 1-16.

---Martin, Mark.
I’m With the Bears: Short Stories from a Damaged Planet. Verso, 2011.
Rev. Mother Jones ( Nov./Dec. 2011).
Stories about climate change from dystopian to humor. McKibben wrote the introduction.

--Martin,
Pamela. Oil in the Soil: The Politics
of Paying to Preserve the Amazon. Co-editor
of Ending the Fossil Fuel Era (see Princen) and coauthor
of An Introduction to World Politics: Conflict and Consensus on a
Small Planet.---Mastrandrea, Michael and Stephen Schneider. Preparing
for Climate Change. MIT, 2011
(96pp.). See Greenberg below.

---Mayer, Jane. Dark
Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical
Right. Doubleday, 2016. The definitive study of the control of US
government by a few billionaires led by the Koch brothers (though she had not
read Hoggan). Chapter 8, “The Fossils,”
concentrates on how they halted environmentalists’ push against CO2 for a
decade and continue to impede real progress against climate change. Chapter 9 adds the even darker story of Citizens United: “Money Is Speech: The
Long Road to Citizens United.” And chapter 10, “The Shellacking: Dark
Money’s Midterm Debut, 2010,” describes the massive Republican victory of that
year. See Hoggan, Michaels (and similar
books listed there).

--* (9-18-11) McKibben,
Bill. Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. Times Books, 2010. Advocates localized societies that “can
survive the damage we can no longer prevent.”
Several books in this list promote localism. But see Greenberg below, who finds McKibben’s
“elegant slowdown” to smallness only wishful thinking.

Routledge, 2011. This is short
(91 pg, including bibliography, index and glossary), well documented (9 pg
bibliography), and explores the psychology and sociology of denial along with the evidence
for climate change and its causes. This
is possibly the most succinct and thorough treatment of the subject that I have
come across. Malcolm C

*--Monbiot,
George. Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning. South End, 2009. Like so many of these authors, he sees us as
the last generation that can prevent the conditions which would destroy human
civilization, but we must act decisively quickly. This is the 2nd book I read on
CO2 and planetary heating, and it had a stronger effect upon me than did
Flannery’s probably because I was understanding the scientific discussions
better, though some chapters were slow going.
Full of arresting stories; for example, his chapter on the extraordinary
quantity of CO2 produced by airplanes came as a surprise, since I had only read
about pollution from cars before. Monbiot
has spoken and written repeatedly that the 2007 IPCC report and his own book
are too optimistic, but I think he was the first I encountered to urge a change
in terminology from “warming” to “breakdown.”

A stinging indictment of how the Republican Party has
not only ignored science, but has used bad science to justify its political
agenda. See Mooney’s 2012 The Republican Brain.

--Mooney, Chris
and Sheril Kirshenbaum. Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy
Threatens Our Future. Basic Books,
2009. Has about a dozen pages on
warming. How religious ideologues, an education
system weak in science, science-ignorant politicians, and the corporate media have
collaborated to create a dangerous condition and how scientists have failed to
counter it. See: The Republican War on Science. “A
well-researched, closely argued and amply referenced indictment of the
right-wing’s assault on science and scientists.” See Orestes and Conway.

--Oreskes, Naomi and Erik Conway.Collapse of Western Civilization: View from the Future. In Mullins online (?).
Check internet. Text only 79pp.
but serves usefully as a review or perhaps as an introduction to
beginners. Science-fiction form, written
from the future. Thesis: An ideological
fixation on “free” markets accompanied by denial and self-deception “disabled
the world’s powerful nations” and produced a “second Dark Age.”

Discussed by Art H 2016.*--Naomi Oreskes,Erik M. M.
Conway.Merchants
of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco
Smoke to Global Warming.
2011. "Merchants
of Doubt should finally put to rest the question of whether the science of
climate change is settled. It is, and we ignore this message at our
peril."-Elizabeth Kolbert.
"Brilliantly reported and written with brutal clarity."-Huffington Post. Film based on book 2015. Merchants of Doubt was one of the most talked-about climate
change books of recent years, for reasons easy to understand: It tells the controversial
story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific
advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective
campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge
over four decades. The same individuals who claim the science of global warming
is "not settled" have also denied the truth about studies linking
smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole.
"Doubt is our product," wrote one tobacco executive. These
"experts" supplied it. See
Michaels.

--Oreskes, Science on a Mission: American Oceanography in the Cold War
and Beyond (forthcoming)
--Parenti, Christian. Tropic
of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence. Nation Books, 2011. An important book that brings together the
converging disruptions of wars and warming.
The waste of public funds on illegal wars that are urgently needed to
prepare for warming plus the military machine as a major contributor of CO2
must be part of any comprehensive discussion.
See Bertel, Branagan, Brown, Dyer, Paskal, Sanders. Discussed by Dick 2016.

--Paskal,
Cleo. Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will
Redraw the World Map. Palgrave,
2010. One of the pioneering books
exploring where climate change confronts national security. See
Angus, Bertel, Collectif, Dyer,
Heinberg, Parenti, Sanders, Schell.

-- Richard Pearson. Driven to Extinction, The Impact of Climate
Change on Biodiversity. (2011).
See Pollack, Sanders, Shiva, Ward and other books.

--Pollack,
Henry. A World Without Ice. Penguin,
2009. Excellent book on cause-effects:
melting ice and rising seas. Esp. read
Ch. 7 for a summary of the science of climate change focused on melting ice and
the consequences to all people and animals on the planet. A good way to introduce the public to the
reality of warming. See Ward.

BurtonRichter, Beyond Smoke and Mirrors (Art:
too scientific for some, but just right for some others).

-- Eric Pooley , The Climate War. . . . "A riveting tale, the very first
account of the epic American Campaign to get serious about global
warming." Pres. Bill Clinton

Purdy,
Jedediah. After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene. Harvard UP, 2015. Addresses our age of “permanent crises”: loss of species and habitats, resource
depletion, drought. Environmental reform
requires political economy: how wealth is created and distributed, what freedom
and equality the society produces, how well it has prepared for the future,
etc. Rev. Harper’s Magazine (Sept.
2015).

--Rifkin, Jeremy. The
Empathic Civilization. Rev. Amanda
Gefter, “Jeremy Rifkin: The third industrial revolution,” NewScientist (Feb.
17, 2010). “ In The Empathic
Civilization, Jeremy Rifkin argues that before we can save ourselves from
climate change we have to break a vicious circle and embrace a new model of
society based on scientists' new understanding of human nature. I asked him how
we can do it. “ MORE: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/02/jeremy-rifkin-the-third-industrial-revolution.html

--Romm,
Joseph. Hell and High Water: The Global
Warming Solution. Harper, 2007. In a spirit of hopefulness he describes
remedies, but if we haven’t made drastic changes by 2030s, he declares, CO2
likely to be over 450ppm and climbing, and our fate out of our hands.Even though this book was published in 2007
(and therefore written in 2006), it seems up-to-date, and that, his book reveals,
is because a scientific consensus about warming existed by 2006. The book (like so many in this list) is very
clear and frequently punctuated by gong after gong of reality.

--*Roston, Eric.
The Carbon Age: How Life's Core Element Has Become
Civilization's Greatest Threat. 2008. A
history of carbon, of carbon chemistry and chemists, and of the increase of CO2
in the atmosphere and climate breakdown.
Packed with interesting anecdotes, interspersed with explanation of the
developing science, and moments of powerful summation. For example, this explanation of why I was
uneasy about the Weather Channel’s air quality reporting never mentioning
CO2: “The invisibility of carbon dioxide
emissions to the naked eye itself is part of the reason it has been so easy for
deniers to confuse the public about dangerous man-made global warming for more
than twenty years.”(172 in the midst of an account of Charles David Keeling’s
CO2 research); and Keeling’s empirical proof of the rise of CO2: “When Keeling’s first apparatus was set up at
Mauna Loa, the reading was 313pp. Today it has passed 383ppm….Up it goes, 2ppm
a year or so, and accelerating.”

-- Russell Dick. Horsemen
of the Apocalypse.About the bad guys like the Koch
brothers and more who are still pushing fossil fuels, know thine enemy.

--Sandel, Michael. What
Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets.
Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2012.
Rev. The Humanist (July-Aug.
2012). The US not merely has a market system,
it is thoroughly, culturally a market system in which all aspects are
“imperiously marketized” and commodified by the powerful interests that benefit
from it. Solution? His Liberalism
and the Limits of Justice (2009) is a “core text in liberal communitarian
philosophy,” which asserts non-market values where in the public interest. [This and other critiques of free-market
capitalism—esp. Magdoff and Foster-- should be part of our Forum’s effort to
understand how to mitigate and adapt to climate change. D]

--Sanders, Barry. The
Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism. AK, 2009.
“The military produces enough greenhouse gases…to place the entire
globe…in the most imminent danger of extinction.” See Bertel, Parenti, Paskal.

--Schell,
Jonathan. The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger.

--Schwartz, Judith. Cows
Save the Planet: And Other Improbable Ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth.
2013.

--Schweiger,
Larry. Last Chance: Preserving Life on Earth.
Fulcrum, 2009. If C02 is not
checked, we will create irreversible temperature increases and destruction. This book is mainly about
the many sources of reduction and
extinction of many species (polar bears) and the expansion of others (pine
beetles). The causes and effects of
global warming on our ecosystems, especially wildlife, are a main but not the
only subject.. Proposes a plan of
action for all citizens. Schweiger is
the CEO of the National Wildlife Federation.

--Schneider,
Stephen: Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save the Earth’s Climate. In the 1970’s he became editor of the new
Journal Climate Change

*--Seidl, Amy. Finding Higher Ground: Adaptation
in the Age of Warming. Beacon, 2011. An introduction for the general
audience.

--Shiva,
Vandana.. Soil Not Oil. Urges drastic
changes in economic system esp.from corporate to small agriculture. See McKibben. Promotes the Universal Declaration on the
Rights of the Earth.

--Siegel, Charles.Unplanning:
Livable Cities and Political Choices"Unplanning is a wonderful read! It is
beautifully written, it takes up extremely important and timely topics, and it
offers a new and concrete approach to democracy and sustainability. I enjoy
going back almost at random to read and re-read pages and passages from it.
It's very engaging and stimulating - and it should be read by every
environmentalist." Prof. Charles Derber, author of Greed to Greed

--*Speth, James G. The
Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from
Crisis to Sustainability. Yale UP,
2008. Important for grappling with
capitalism as a major cause of warming and prevention of change. . I recall Art saying this is excellent. It explains why capitalism is a root cause of
climate collapse. “It was in the
twentieth century, and especially since World War II, that human society truly
left the moorings of its past and launched itself on the planet with
unprecedented force..”See Shiva
and many of these books. See: Magdoff,
Rifkin, Shiva.

--Stager,
Curt. Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth. St. Martin’s,
2011. Dick: A bizarre vision at points; e.g. pointing
out good news that the coal we save now will decrease the much worse ice age to
come. He gives the LONG view.

-- Will Steffen, et al.2004
.
Global Change and the Earth System: A Planet Under Pressure. “. . .the Earth System is now in a no-analogue
situation, best referred to as a new era in the geological history of Earth,
the Anthropocene” (81).

--Stein,
Lord. Why Are We Waiting? The Logic,
Urgency, and Promise of Tackling Climate Change. MIT P, 2015. Explains why it has been so difficult to
tackle climate change effectively.

-- Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of
Environmental Crisis by Sandra Steingraber

--Thiele, Leslie Paul. Indra’s Net and the Midas Touch:
Living Sustainably in a Connected World.
MIT,
2011. Explores unintended consequences
in an interdependent world and opportunities for creativity and community.

--Tokar,
Brian. Toward Climate Justice: Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and Social
Change. Communalism P, 2010. Rev. Z
Magazine (May 2011). Review
struggles with Tokar’s struggle to tell the truth, the scientific consensus
about warming and the catastrophes coming, yet to offer hope for a transition
toward a more harmonious, more humane, and ecological way of life. This is the struggle of most of these book.

--Tumber,
Catherine. Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America’s Smaller Industrial Cities
in a Low-Carbon World. MIT,
2011. How small to midsize Rust Belt
cities can play a crucial role in forging a sustainable, relocalized
future. Other books on contraction to
local and smaller: Heinberg, McKibben,
Seidl.

Global warming is one of today's greatest challenges. The
science of climate change leaves no doubt that policies to cut emissions are
overdue. Yet, after twenty years of international talks and treaties, the world
is now in gridlock about how best to do this. David Victor argues that such
gridlock has arisen because international talks have drifted away from the
reality of what countries are willing and able to implement at home. Most of the
lessons that policy makers have drawn from the history of other international
environmental problems won't actually work on the problem of global warming.
Victor argues that a radical rethinking of global warming policy is required
and shows how to make international law on global warming more effective. This
book provides a roadmap to a lower carbon future based on encouraging bottom-up initiatives at national, regional
and global levels, leveraging national self-interest rather than wishful
thinking.

--Volk,
Tyler. CO2 Rising: The World’s Greatest Environmental Challenge. MIT P, 2009.
--Wagner and Weitzman.Climate
Shock. 2015. On economics of cc. Publisher’s summary: In Climate Shock,
Gernot Wagner and Martin Weitzman explore in lively, clear terms the likely
repercussions of a hotter planet, drawing on and expanding from work previously
unavailable to general audiences. They show that the longer we wait to act, the more likely an extreme event will happen.
A city might go underwater. A rogue nation might shoot particles into the
Earth's atmosphere, geoengineering cooler temperatures. Zeroing in on the
unknown extreme risks that may yet dwarf all else, the authors look at how
economic forces that make sensible climate policies difficult to enact, make
radical would-be fixes like geoengineering all the more probable. What we know
about climate change is alarming enough. What we don't know about the extreme
risks could be far more dangerous. Wagner and Weitzman help readers understand
that we need to think about climate
change in the same way that we think about insurance--as a risk management
problem, only here on a global scale.
Demonstrating that climate change can and should be dealt with--and what
could happen if we don't do so--Climate Shock tackles the defining
environmental and public policy issue of our time. Gernot Wagner is
lead senior economist at the Environmental Defense Fund. He is the author
of But Will the Planet Notice? (Hill & Wang). Martin
L. Weitzman is professor of economics at Harvard University. His books
include Income, Wealth, and the Maximum Principle. For more,
see www.gwagner.com andscholar.harvard.edu/weitzman.--Wallerstein, Immanuel. The
Human Costs of Economic Growth. Monthly
Review, See his Structural Crisis in the World System. See Heinberg, The End of Growth.--Wapner, Paul. Living
Through the End of Nature: The Future of
American Environmentalism. MIT P,
2010. What nature means and other themes
bearing on the choices ahead of us.

--Ward, Peter. Global Warming, the Mass Extinction of the Past, and What They Can Tell
Us About Our Future. 2007. See review below by
Cokinus in Orion (2007), “Under A Green Sky.”

--*Ward,
Peter. The Flooded Earth; Our Future in a World without Ice Caps. 2010.
Rising seas, hungry millions, flooded cities—he describes a fearful
future, if we do not act at once.
(Fitzpatrick)

--Spencer Weart, The Discovery of Global
Warming. 2008. Award-winning book Revised and Expanded Edition. In 2001 an international panel of distinguished climate scientists
announced that the world was warming at a rate without precedent during at
least the last ten millennia, and that warming was caused by the buildup of
greenhouse gases from human activity. The story of how scientists reached that
conclusion—by way of unexpected twists and turns—was the story Spencer Weart
told in The Discovery of Global Warming. Now he brings his
award-winning account up to date, revised throughout to reflect the latest
science and with a new conclusion that shows how the scientific consensus
caught fire among the general world public, and how a new understanding of the
human meaning of climate change spurred individuals and governments to action. (Dick: How much of this publisher’s blurb is
accurate?)

--Wilson, E.
O. Anthill,
a Novel. Norton, 2010. Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer weaves
together the viewpoints of ants, developers, and environmentalists through the
story of young boy from Alabama who tries to
save his beloved forest.

--Mary Christina Wood. Nature's Trust: Environmental Law for a New
Ecological Age. 2013.
For more see Climate Law doc.
(Other books on climate and law:
Gerrard,

BIBLIOS ON WAR AND WARMING
AND ON ENERGY

Biblio on wars and warming is
short because it is grossly understudied.

BOOKS ON
EMPIRE/MILITARISM/WARS as CAUSES OF
WARMING/WEATHER/CLIMATE CHANGE/DESTRUCTION OF ENVIRONMENT (another biblio. deals with warming as cause
of wars). That so few books have been
written about the catastrophic damage to the environment by militarism should
come as a shock.

--Bertel, Rosalie. Planet Earth: The Latest Weapon of War. Black Rose Books, 2001. The increasingly destructive effects of
weaponry and wars. The quest for
military dominance has destabilized the balance of the earth’s ecosystem. I read somewhere that Bertel planned a second
volume, but never wrote it. A book much
needed (several!).

*--Parenti,
Christian. Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence. Nation Books, 2011. An important book that brings together the
converging disruptions of wars and warming.
The waste of public funds on illegal wars that are urgently needed to
prepare for warming plus the military machine as a major contributor of CO2
must be part of any comprehensive discussion.
See Brown, Dyer, Paskal, Sanders.

--Paskal,
Cleo. Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw
the World Map. Palgrave, 2010. One of the pioneering books exploring where
climate change confronts national security.
See Collectif, Dyer, Heinberg, Parenti.

--Sanders,
Barry. The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism. AK, 2009.
“The military produces enough greenhouse gases…to place the entire
globe…in the most imminent danger of extinction.” The only book so far that directly
examines US
empire, militarism, wars as major cause of warming and enviro.
destruction. Why this absence? See
Bertel, Parenti, Paskal.

BOOKS ON ENERGY (nuclear
etc.) (asterisk = books chosen for Forum
discussion). Biblio on Energy is short
because many related books appear in the main biblio. above. A bibliography on nuclear power pro and con alone
is book-length (two?!).

--Blees, Tom. Prescription
for the Planet: The Painless Remedy for our Energy and Environmental Crises. (self-pub.?) 2008. Many congratulatory blurbs.

--Cravens, Gwyneth. Power
to Save the World: The Truth about
Nuclear Energy. Knopf, 2007.

---Graetz, Michael. The
End of Energy: The Unmaking of America’s
Environment, Security, and Independence.MIT
P, 2011. Forty years of energy
incompetence: villains, failures of leadership, and missed opportunities.

*---Heinberg, Richard.
The End of Growth: Adapting to Our
New Economic Reality. New Society,
2011. We are reaching the end of
conventional economic growth, and paths that formerly led to economic
prosperity now lead to disaster.

--Lester, Richard and David Hart. Unlocking
Energy Innovation: How America
Can Build a Low-Cost, Low-Carbon Energy System.
MIT, 2011. Lays out an approach to building a vastly
improved U.S.
energy innovation system.